St. Johns speller 2-for-2 but misses National Bee semifinals

Wednesday

May 27, 2009 at 11:38 AM

WASHINGTON — Two-for-two on stage wasn't enough for Caroline Snowden to overcome one-on-one with a computer.

The eighth-grader from Ponte Vedra Beach spelled both of her words — "ancestral" and "lyophilize" — correctly during Wednesday's two oral rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. But she didn't earn enough points from Tuesday's computerized first-round test to join 41 other spellers in Thursday's semifinals.

That test of 50 words included potential stumpers like "civitas," "quomodo" and "onychorrhexis." Spellers didn't know which 25 of the words would be chosen for scoring, and they didn't find out who made the semifinals until after all 293 of them —a record — had tackled their second- and third-round words.

Caroline, from Landrum Middle School, sailed through the second round by correctly hitting on "ancestral." The winner of The Times-Union's Regional Bee nailed "lyophilize," which means, "to freeze-dry," as the words got harder in the third round.

The semifinals begin at 10 a.m. Thursday on ESPN. The top dozen or so spellers will move on to the finals, competing for a trophy that comes with more than $40,000 in cash and prizes. The finals will be broadcast by ABC during prime time for the fourth consecutive year.

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